早く帰ってね～ ＋ Some Japanese Inventions Only Work in Japan: Part I

Home is where your husband is. Come back soon!

Monday, V and I went on short shopping trip from Harajuku to Shibuya. Our objective was to kite down Cat Street hitting up Kiddyland and then the Disney Store in Shibuya. We are not actually children but in fact buying for children, or rather, yet unborn children, er child. Between V's sister and Beatrice, I feel like we have bought more stuff for babies than for ourselves in the last year. V tells me the Bloomingdales disagrees.

Had never been to Choco Cro, a chocolate croissant chain, but after hearing Khai off-handedly mention it, I figured we should check it out. Below is the Hazelnut Choco Cro; pretty delicious, flaky yet chewy like it should be, and can you say, "holy butter?" This thing is not that good for you. Maybe the best chocolate croissant I've had, but probably not. I have my allegiances after all.

Kiddyland had a disappointing selection of Winnie the Pooh baby goods, so we continued on to Shibuya. We took a slightly different road this time and window-shopped Meiji-dori. Someday we'll come back and give this area a thorough investigation, but Harajuku has so many alleys full of random stores that I'm not sure how we'll cover it all.

Walking down Meiji-dori means we bypass Momotaro Jeans again. Anybody have any awesome jeans recommendations for Japan? I've scoped out Momotaro, Pure Blue Japan, Evisu, and Oni Denim and they're all pretty pricey. Not sure if I'm going to just bite the bullet or settle for Edwin.

That is the Disney Store in Shibuya. Or rather that's the building that houses the Disney Store; still, pretty damn spanking cool for Disney. Not sure what the rest of the building is used for though. The inside is pretty much what you would expect: a decent dosage of Japan-only Disney goods and staircases that made V feel like a magical princess. We successfully found a super-cute ring pillow and adorable towels. Mission Accomplished.

I had texted everyone earlier to see if anyone wanted to meet up for dinner since we were out already. Turned out only Diana was available, so we walked into random stores in Shibuya until she was finished with work. Around 7:30 PM, we were starting to get hungry and knowing the line at Mawashi Sushi Katsu, we left Shibuya for Meguro.

The line wasn't quite as long as we thought, and after a half an hour wait, we spent another 15 minutes waiting at the front of the line for Diana to show up. The hostess lady there is super nice and actually seated us for three before Diana even got there. Mawashi is very affordable kaiten sushi. I actually had no idea that plates started at 105 Yen. Compared to other 105 Yen sushi places, the prices scale up more quickly. Still, I'd say the pricing is appropriate based on how much better it tastes.

V had never had fugu before, so we picked out a plate of fried fugu above so that she could try it. She agreed that the taste wasn't anything special and this specific preparation of it was already cold and a bit soggy. You know what? I had another bad reaction. My tongue went numb and I started to feel my body shutting down. Never again...I'm retarded.

Check it out, it's an automatic kaiten sushi plate scanner + calculator. This thing somehow knows what color plates you ate, counts them all up, and spits out a number. The waitress had to shake the thing and scan the plates a couple times, but it's a handy little thing. Stay tuned for the Japanese Inventions section later...

V and I spent around 3000 Yen I think. Not bad since both of us ate so much we wanted to die. Diana spent almost as much as us since she ate all the expensive stuff. That's a pretty good representation of Mawashi; you can get by on the 105 Yen sushi, but a lot of the tasty stuff is pricier. One thing about Mawashi is that normal sushi is not usually on the kaiten. If you want something like maguro, salmon, or hamachi, you pretty much have to order it off a sheet. All the dishes on the belt are either inventive or just plain strange making Mawashi a great place for an exploratory sushi experience as well.

We met up with Izumi and Khai after dinner. We had originally intended to meet at Nos in Ebisu, but it turned out that the venue was booked for some other event. We found Izumi hanging out close to it, and she was so relieved that she happened to find us as her cell phone had just run out of batteries.

Instead we hit up an Italian joint right outside Ebisu Station (don't remember the name). Khai found us there and we chilled out over some Italian wine. It was fun seeing everyone as V was heading out and Khai actually flew to Hokkaido on Tuesday morning as well. It was interesting trying to figure out what kind of wine we were drinking from the Katakana, but the wine itself wasn't that good. Possibly my least favorite thing about French/Italian in Japan: Katakana, no French, no Italian.

Back to class on Tuesday; nothing much to say about that, but V planned a final lunch date and we went to find 無鉄砲 - Muteppou, one of the ramen places that made up Booth 23 from the Tokyo Ramen Show.

As far as I can tell, Muteppou is from Kyoto but has three or four locations including the one closest to Tokyo in Numabukuro. Turns out that Numabukuro is a cool six stops away from Shinjuku on the Seibu Shinjuku line, very accessible. The town itself is quaintish like the rest of the outer Tokyo areas but Numabukuro was decked out with all the bells and whistles. We headed north of the station up this small shopping street and were greeted by an ambience of Christmas music. There were little speakers everywhere exuding Christmas Spirit out of every orifice.

We're kind of sort of thinking about doing Christmas in Japan where it's a bigger deal than in Taipei. We'll see if I can handle the Christmas spirit... I have a feeling it might be even more overwhelming than in the US.

Anyway, after a short walk we got to the ramen shop, ordered our ramen and sat down against the wall. The pictures all looked something like what we ate at the Tokyo Ramen Show and after scanning the room, we came across this sign.

It's the same collagen sign we saw at the ramen show! Time for some more magical medicine. I think the store might have just opened as one of the workers was curious how these goddamn gaijin found his store. Actually, he was really nice and thanked us for coming out to visit. Before long our ramen arrived and it looked promisingly thick.

The color and taste was a little different. I think that it might have been less rich, but I can't say for certain what the difference is. Lordy lordy, it was tasty. The noodles were typically thin and curly and the chashu wasn't really anything special. This ramen is all in the soup and the soup is dynamite. The one thing that made it disparately (ambiguously potential use of this word) worse than Booth 23 is that towards the bottom, the broth got really gritty. Downing the whole thing is not exactly enjoyable. Still, it's my favorite ramen outside of the ramen show so far. Pretty sure the original stores in Kansai are better, but I told the guy that ran after us as we were leaving that it was just as good as what we had at Booth 23. I lied, but it was close and we'll definitely be back. They also have a fish stock ramen that V says she'll try next time, but I dunno.... Trying the other ramen means passing up on the original tonkotsu.

Along the lines of the automatic kaiten sushi plate calculator, I've created a special segment called, "Some Japanese Inventions Only Work in Japan." Expect additional installments.

Everyday, I bike 20 minutes up and down hills on a single-speed bike with 14 inch wheels to class. For a while, I had a really difficult time, but ever since I fixed my rear tire, I've been moving more easily and carrying much more speed in general. Never knew inflating tires could be so important...

Everyday, I get to the bike rack, undo my lock, string it through the wheels and lock it up. Everyone else has one of these:

My first thought was, "That's amazing! You just turn your key to lock in your rear wheel. Why don't we have this in America?" Two seconds later I realized that in America, someone would come around with a pickup truck, throw all the bikes in, and then just rip the locks off later with proper tools.

There are a lot of "amenities" here I find either convenient or superfluous and regardless would never work in other countries. My bathtub has a reheating function for you to save the water inside and then just heat it back up. My bathroom has a drying function where you dry up the water left behind. We have decided to stop using this function because our power bill has been racking up and we have no clear idea why.

You can also use it to dry your clothes on days you don't want to hang them outside, but if I had a drier then I could dry my clothes in half an hour rather than five. Which is why every single Japanese apartment has a balcony by the way. In general, people dry their clothes outside, and a balcony is really a necessity as far as real estate goes.

My school cafeteria has a water cooler with three dispensers: hot water, cold water, and green tea.

I've actually used and enjoy this function, but it really isn't that difficult to make green tea from hot water.

Anyway, there's stuff like this all over the place and I'll keep posting the random things that Japanese people take for granted and would never see if they left the country.

I will be lonely here all alone by my lonesome.